Mervin Joe Kelly

Mervin Joseph Kelly (February 14, 1894 – March 18, 1971) was an American industrial physicist. He worked at Bell Labs from 1925 to 1959 rising to director of research, then president and eventually chairman.

Early life and education

Mervin Joseph Kelly was born in Princeton, Missouri, on February 14, 1894. His parents were Mary Etta (née Evans) and Joseph Fenimore Kelly. Mervin's great-great-grandfather had moved from Ireland to Virginia, while his mother's parents were Welsh. Kelly attended grade and high school in Gallatin, and graduated as class president and valedictorian at age 16. His classmates at Gallatin High School called him "our Irish king".

Kelly excelled as a student, particularly in chemistry and physics. He had planned to become a mining engineer, and spent a summer working in a Utah copper mine. This experience changed his desired career path, and he switched to a general science course upon his return to the Missouri School of Mines and Metallurgy. The heads of the chemistry and mathematics departments volunteered to give him special instruction, and he was appointed as an assistant in chemistry, for which he received free tuition and an annual grant of $300 . When he graduated in 1914 with a B.S. degree, Kelly decided that he wanted "to make a life in academic research." Kelly worked to provide practical vacuum tubes. He worked with Clinton Davisson at the time, and later described him as "perhaps my closest friend." Kelly's work on vacuum tubes as a researcher and later production chief resulted in the longevity of Western Electric telephone repeater tubes increasing from 1,000 to 80,000 hours. Kelly remarked: "Progress has been made in some fields of technology in a four‐year interval that, under normal conditions of peace, would have required from 10 to 20 years." Kelly was acknowledged in the 1956 Nobel Prize acceptance speeches of Shockley, Bardeen, and Brattain.

Kelly became executive vice-president of Bell Telephone Laboratories in 1944, and was promoted to president in 1951. Kelly served on the company's board of directors beginning in 1944, and was named chairman of the board of directors on January 1, 1959. He was also a director of the Sandia Corporation, a subsidiary of the Western Electric Company, from 1952 through 1958. In addition, he was a director of the Prudential Insurance Company of America, Bausch & Lomb, Tung-Sol, and the Economic Club of New York. Kelly retired from Bell Telephone Laboratories on March 1, 1959.

Personal life and death

On November 11, 1915, Kelly married Katherine Milsted. He once described her as his "most candid critic". He was cremated and his ashes were scattered into the Gulf of Mexico.

For his contributions to the American war effort, Kelly was awarded the Presidential Certificate of Merit in 1947. Kelly was inaugural winner of the award, in 1960. The Mervin J. Kelly Award ran until 1975.